Thank You, Kaname
by Descendants' Eyes
Summary: Kaname reflects on how Jurri and Haruka were able to raise the person in which their real child was killed over.


**Summary:**

Kaname reflects on how Jurri and Haruka were able to raise the person in which their real child was killed over.

**Disclaimer:**

I do not own Vampire Knight. It belongs to Matsuri Hino.

**Story Rating:**

Rated T for some violence, minor coarse language, or minor suggestive adult themes.

**Notes:**

"Dialogue"

_Flashbacks._

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><p>Thank You, Kaname<p>

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><p>"<em>Thank you, Kaname."<em>

Yuuki once asked me whether I ever loved Jurri and Haruka Kuran.

At the time, I couldn't help but think how idiotic that question was.

While they are not as close as my love for Yuuki, I truly loved both of my "parents" very much.

When I was younger, my second time as a child, I couldn't help but wonder how they could stand the sight of me.

That bastard Rido killed their newborn son Kaname, who was ironically name after me, and sacrificed its blood in order to awaken me from my slumber.

He killed an innocent child just so he could drink my thick blood, the thickest of all Kuran blood, for the power in the crimson liquid.

And yet, when I reverted myself into that of an infant and stripped my memories in an attempt to stop myself from feasting on an my descendents' blood, the two took me in as if I was the very child whose blood had been sacrificed to me.

As I aged, I slowly began to regain my memories.

I often though that the two were simply raising me like raising an animal for slaughter.

I thought that they were letting me age so that they could torture me for the death of their son.

If they had tried to kill me, I wouldn't have resisted and would have let them kill me, even though I could kill them at a young age.

However, it was hard to believe that when Haruka patted my head softly when I pretended to have learned a new topic or when Jurri kissed me on the cheek when I left to go "play" at Ichijo's house and when I got home.

Then simple acts were filled with such warmth and love that it made it hard to believe that they were planning my death.

Then, they announced that Jurri was pregnant and that I was going to be a big brother.

I had not felt so angry in a very, very long time.

It was wonderful that they were going to bring another life into the world; after all, I knew that they would raise the child to respect humans.

Just like they did.

Just like I did.

Just like _she _did.

I was upset that they would bring a child into the world before they killed me.

While I had been having contradictions about my slaughter theory, I had not gave up on it.

Children, young and innocent, did not understand revenge the way adults did.

This child would grow to love me, as all children love everyone, and then those two would kill me, making the child upset and possibly scarred for the rest of its life.

Yes, I was angry.

They told me they were planning on having a little girl, a little sister for me to "be all brotherly and help your father keep the boys away from her" as Jurri once told me.

Later on, they finally told me that they for her to become my wife.

That really contradicted my slaughter theory, but I never really though that the girl would mean that much to me.

I loved children, I always had.

Back before my slumber, when I tried to immerse myself in human villages, the children were the reasons I was there.

At that time, a simply cold for a human meant death.

A scrap on the knee meant death.

A meal not cooked quite enough meant death.

A broken leg.

A sprained ankle.

A dislocated shoulder.

Humans were so killed so much more easily, and the children died much easier than the adults.

I could not sit by and just let children drop dead left and right over simply things that I could cure or fix.

I was a being who could never get sick.

I could never die.

My only limit was sleep.

And so, I went from village to village as a doctor.

For injuries, I wrapped bandages, told the parents and siblings to them the child of its feet, told them to feed him more often or to not feed him at all.

For diseases, something a little hard to cure with simple remedies, I would give them small amounts of my blood.

My powerful blood would strengthen their bodies immune systems and chase out all traces of foreign bodies and harmful cells.

Unfortunately, I could not stay at a single village for very long.

They noticed when their beloved doctor did not age.

Eventually, they would riot and drive me from the village.

I never resisted when they did so, for they were fragile humans, and I did not want to accidentally hurt them.

They were my kind's naturally prey and they feared that which was different and that which they did not understand.

Hell, I did not understand myself.

So, I never blamed them for being terrified of me, even though they would have smiled at me just the day before.

I was a monster who had been messing with their children.

They couldn't be sure it was all a rouse.

Whenever I wasn't posing as a doctor, I would simply think.

I spent many years worth of time just sitting on a rock formation or in a tree just thinking.

I often wondered what I was and why I never died.

I often wished that some force would come and strike me down and end my eternal torment.

The force came to me in the form of a woman.

Although, she had not come to end me, she was definitely of force of her own.

I remember her face when she first found me.

I had sensed her approach long before I heard it from behind me and had turned to see what it was.

When I saw it was a human, I turned forward again, uninterested.

She had stared at me in shock, although I did not look to see her reaction, I could sense her shock in the air between us.

Her shock quickly melted away thought, and she studied me for a long time.

"_And, you are?"_

"_Kaname."_

I answered her out of respect, the way my human parents had raised me to do.

"_Kaname, why are you just sitting on that cliff? What if you fell?"_

"_If I fell, I would walk away fine."_

She was silent for a long time.

"_What are you, Kaname?"_

I turned and stared at her then.

Her warm eyes and soft face clearly showed her thoughts.

She didn't want to know _what_ my answer was, but _how_ I would answer.

I opened my mouth for the first time in months.

"_What are you?"_

And so, over decades, I began to stay with that woman.

I, who had not stayed in one place for more than twenty years, found it hard to stay in the castle in which a few of my kind called "home."

I had never understood the feeling of "home," why the comfort of a human's own house was better than that of a close friend's.

They were just shelters, nothing more.

But as my time at that place grew longer, I began to understand the feeling of "home."

I cared nothing for the walls of my room or the floor under my feet or the ceiling over me.

No, it was what they represented that made that place "home."

For once in my long life, there was a place where I was not alone.

Those there did more than understand me, for they experienced it as well.

They knew the pains of a never ending life, a life of feasting on the blood of others.

I had hoped to one day end all our pains.

And so, with that in mind, I began my experiments.

I used my own flesh and blood as the keys.

I tried any manner possible to find a way to break down those cells and kill them.

Anything I could think of.

After many years, I tried something which I had though had less than a one percent chance of working.

A worked my flesh into a metal.

I had thought that the molten metal, hot enough to turn back into a liquid, could possibly burn the flesh as it would a human's.

It did something else.

I watched as the liquid metal touch a small piece of tissue from my heart and fused with it.

The metal spasmed as though it were alive.

It felt alive.

I reported my findings to _her_ and she did not seem to understand the implements.

I had found a way for us to die.

If only I had none just how proud she was of my findings.

Then, maybe, I would have been able to prevent her from throwing her own heart into that furnace.

I remember her peaceful expression as she laid on that table.

The human's had laid her out in respect for what she had done, for that was tradition at that time.

I watched as she crumbled into dust before me.

So, I couldn't believe it when Yuuki was born, and she wore _her_ face.

Her small, chubby face, chubby with baby-fat, looked so much like her, I couldn't help but stare.

Of course, at the time, I couldn't remember just who Yuuki looked like, but I knew it was someone important to me.

I reached out and held her tightly to me, being careful not to crush her in my much stronger grip.

Yuuki grew older and I found myself growing evermore attached to that little girl.

My slaughter theory was far from my mind, just barely hanging on, but still there, while the rest of my mind was occupied now by Yuuki.

It seemed so strange to me that this child would one day become my wife.

It was worth the strange feeling if I got to spend time with her.

We grew older and I truly believed that, in this life, I was and would stay happy.

Then, Rido came and I knew Juuri's plan.

And I hated her for it.

I did not want my precious Yuuki to forget me.

I feared that she would open her eyes, and look at me with eyes of those gazing at a stranger.

But I was no fool.

If Rido was stopped and Yuuki was turned human, we could find a place where she would be safe and we could keep an eye on her from afar.

I didn't want to simply watch her grow up, I wanted to be there.

But I had to put Yuuki before myself, so I let Jurri take her away.

When she walked into with that small yet sad smile, I wished that someone would tear out my heart right then and there.

Juuri planned to sacrifice her own life to save her daughters.

I didn't know how Haruka was going to survive without Juuri, it didn't seem possible.

They were two halves of a whole.

Inseparable and unbreakable.

I never though that Haruka would die too.

In that room, Jurri walked up to me, I truly feared what she would say to me.

I, who have lived for many tens of thousands of years, have hardly ever been afraid.

Then, as I looked into her eyes, I was afraid of what words she would say to me to hurt me even more than she already was, taking Yuuki away.

I never expected her to kiss me then.

That kiss was different than her kisses of love over the years.

All the other kisses had been of a mother to her son.

This one was of a friend to a friend.

But it held just as much love.

It startled me, and when she pulled away, I couldn't help but stare at her with wide eyes.

I couldn't process any of my thoughts, so there was nothing for me to say.

But she did had something to say, and her next words pierced my heart deeper than any other.

"_Thank you, Kaname."_

I never managed to get those words out of my head, even as she pulled Yuuki from the room, and I turned so I wouldn't have to watch.

"_Thank you, Kaname."_

Those words, so simple, such simple words that she had said to me so many times in my second life, were different then, deeper.

She wasn't just thanking me for doing this, for taking care of Yuuki while she and Haruka confronted Rido outside.

She wasn't thanking me for handing her the book she had been wanting to reread.

She wasn't thanking me for changing Yuuki's diaper again.

She was thanking me for simply existing.

She and Haruka had always called me their son, when in the vampire society and in the privacy of our home.

They constantly joked about which sides of my personality, or lack thereof, as Juuri constantly reminded me, was inherited from them.

Jurri argued that I got my "emotionless-boring-dead" attitude from Haruka.

Haruka argued that I got my "caring-loving-side" from Juuri.

They said so, even when they knew that the opposite was more likely.

I knew that they knew I was not their real son, for how could they not.

As purebloods and as my own descendents, they knew that I was not the child which Juuri had carried in her womb.

But they treated me as such.

"_Thank you, Kaname."_

It was those simple words that finally crushed my slaughter theory out of existence and I finally begun to realize that they didn't just treat me like there son.

I was their son.

"_Thank you, Kaname."_

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><p>So, what do you think? I had come up wit this idea a few months ago, but it got erased by accident and I decided to work on it again.<p>

I originally never expected it to be this long. I never planned on adding most of the references that I did, like Kaname's memories of his past. It was originally going to have scenes of the manga translated and written out, like a novel, but be in Kaname's point-of-view, so you could see his thoughts as the scenes to by, like the scene where Juuri kisses him and says "Thank you, Kaname."

When I got done typing this, I thought about actually adding some of these scenes, but I decided I like this just the way it is.

Please Review.

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><p>Started: Thursday, December 15, 2011<p>

Finished: Friday, December 16, 2011


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